“Aye,” she said. “I’m that.” She made claws of her hands and advanced on him slowly. He giggled uncontrollably as he backed away from her. “C’mere, you, you’ve more torture comin’ to ye before I’m satisfied that you can keep a secret.”
He held his arms before him like a movie zombie and walked toward her. “Yes, mathter,” he said in a monotone. Just as he was about to reach her, he dodged to one side, then took off.
She chased him, laughing, halfway back to the mountain, then cried off. He stopped a hundred yards up the road from her, she doubled over with her hands planted on her thighs, face red, chest heaving. “You go on, then,” she called. “But it’s more torture for you at school tomorrow, and don’t you forget it!”
“Only if you catch me!” he called back.
“Oh, I’ll catch you, have no fear.”
She caught him at lunch. He was sitting in a corner of the schoolyard, eating from a paper sack of mushrooms and dried rabbit and keeping an eye on Edward-Frederick-George as he played tag with the other kindergartners. She snuck up behind him and dropped a handful of gravel down the gap of his pants and into his underpants. He sprang to his feet, sending gravel rattling out the cuffs of his jeans.
“Hey!” he said, and she popped something into his mouth. It was wet and warm from her hand and it squirmed. He spat it out and it landed on the schoolyard with a soft splat.
It was an earthworm, thick with loamy soil.
“You!” he said, casting about for a curse of sufficient vehemence. “You!”